Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The inadequacies of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (Fourth Edition) extend far beyond the chapter on climate science you discuss in your editorial “A Judicial Climate Science Scandal” (Review & Outlook, March 14). Another chapter, “How Science Works,” has earned sharp criticism from Jessica Weinkle, an associate professor of public and international affairs at University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and from legal expert Nathan Schachtman. The latter also critiqued the chapter “The Admissibility of Expert Testimony.”
The inadequacies of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (Fourth Edition) extend far beyond the chapter on climate science you discuss in your editorial “A Judicial Climate Science Scandal” (Review & Outlook, March 14). Another chapter, “How Science Works,” has earned sharp criticism from Jessica Weinkle, an associate professor of public and international affairs at University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and from legal expert Nathan Schachtman. The latter also critiqued the chapter “The Admissibility of Expert Testimony.”
But there is a wider problem. As the National Association of Scholars will soon publish in a comprehensive piece by S. Stanley Young and Warren Kindzierski, the Reference Manual pervasively scants the effects of modern science’s irreproducibility crisis. Thanks to a combination of sloppy procedures and groupthink—often driven by politics—we’ve seen the vast production of research that isn’t reproduced or can’t be. This in turn has facilitated scientific misconduct by a smaller number of scientists untrue to their calling.
Though the Federal Judicial Center has withdrawn the climate science chapter, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine haven’t.
Both entities should review the entire Reference Manual for errors. They also should begin now to revise their procedures for the Fifth Edition—above all by commissioning a chapter on the irreproducibility crisis.
Peter Wood and David Randall
National Association of Scholars
New York
You’re right to highlight the difficulty of getting truly unbiased and scientifically accurate background information to judges tasked with adjudicating cases involving climate change. Judges aren’t usually trained in the multiple disciplines lumped together under the term “climate science” and instead have to rely on neutral, accurate and up-to-date scientific reference material.
There’s another means progressive climate activists use to provide prejudicial information to judges. Much like the high-pressure tactics of the timeshare salesmen of old, the Climate Judiciary Project—a project of the Environmental Law Institute—reportedly offers state and federal judges and their families free multiday training sessions at traditional vacation spots such as Napa Valley, Palm Beach and Hawaii. The Washington Free Beacon reports that these seminars present the viewpoint that the science is settled on points that are still contested and that judges are expected to commit to a year of CJP events—as well as enlist other judges to the cause. Such one-sided presentations bring into question the organization’s claims of nonpartisanship, and the impartiality of any resulting court rulings.
The Federal Judicial Center (FJC), the research and education arm of the U.S. federal judiciary, has removed a chapter on climate science from the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
The Federal Judicial Center (FJC), the research and education arm of the U.S. federal judiciary, has removed a chapter on climate science from the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
This manual serves as a key resource for federal judges (and often state judges) when evaluating scientific evidence in litigation, including under standards like Daubert for admissibility of expert testimony.
The fourth edition was released in December 2025, marking the first time it included a dedicated section on climate science, authored by Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton (affiliated with Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and related institutions).
The chapter aimed to help judges assess expert testimony and evidence related to climate science, including attribution (linking emissions to specific impacts).
Every so often, an institution pauses, looks at what it has just done, and quietly backs away from the edge. That appears to be what has happened at the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), and it is worth marking the moment.
As confirmed in a February 6, 2026, letter from FJC Director Judge Robin L. Rosenberg to West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey, the Federal Judicial Center has removed the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition. That single administrative act- “has omitted the climate science chapter”- represents a rare and welcome course correction.
The Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual is no ordinary publication. Courts have cited earlier editions more than a thousand times. Judges rely on it not to tell them what to think, but to help them understand how to evaluate expert claims without becoming surrogate scientists. Its authority flows precisely from its reputation for restraint.
The now-removed climate chapter threatened that reputation.
The problem was never that climate science exists or that climate changes. The problem was that the chapter treated deeply disputed questions—especially climate attribution—as if they were settled background facts. In doing so, it blurred the line between education and advocacy, effectively supplying judges with a pre-framed lens through which ongoing and future climate litigation could be viewed.
West Virginia led the charge calling for the Federal Judicial Center to immediately withdraw an inappropriate new addition to the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence that deals with “climate science.” We have just received notice that, because of our efforts, the chapter is… pic.twitter.com/kx2YxNyZUU
That did not go unnoticed. In late January, a coalition of state attorneys general, led by West Virginia, formally objected. Their letter argued that the chapter “places the judiciary firmly on one side” of unresolved scientific and legal disputes and risks turning the Manual into something resembling a quasi–amicus brief for climate plaintiffs. That is strong language, but the underlying concern was straightforward: courts are supposed to test claims, not absorb them prepackaged.
The timing made the issue even more sensitive. Climate litigation increasingly hinges on attribution—attempts to link specific storms, floods, or heatwaves to global emissions, and then to particular companies or states. These are not minor technical questions. They sit at the intersection of complex models, sparse data, and cascading assumptions. If attribution were genuinely settled science, there would be little need for protracted expert battles in court. The fact that those battles dominate climate cases tells its own story.
Against that backdrop, a judiciary-support institution publishing what looks like an endorsed framework for attribution is not neutral. It risks tilting the playing field before a single expert is sworn in.
Congress had already begun asking uncomfortable questions about climate-focused judicial education and whether advocacy organizations were exerting undue influence through “training” and “guidance.” The FJC’s climate chapter landed squarely in that line of fire. Faced with mounting scrutiny from both state officials and Congress, the Center chose not to defend the chapter but to remove it.
That decision deserves cautious applause.
This was not a scientific retraction in the journal sense. No datasets were withdrawn. No equations corrected. What was retracted was something more important in this context: institutional overconfidence. The FJC implicitly acknowledged that publishing a climate chapter in its Reference Manual carried risks that outweighed any supposed benefits.
In doing so, it reaffirmed a basic but increasingly neglected principle: disputed scientific claims belong in court, subjected to cross-examination, competing experts, and explicit discussion of uncertainty. They do not belong embedded in an “authoritative” guide that lawyers can cite as if it were a neutral referee.
A genuinely skeptical climate guide for judges would be relentlessly unglamorous. It would dwell on uncertainty, model sensitivity, data limitations, and the difference between scenario exploration and causal proof. It would emphasize how little global averages say about local outcomes and how fragile attribution chains can be. Most of all, it would warn judges against mistaking institutional consensus for empirical certainty.
The removed chapter appears to have done the opposite. And when that became impossible to ignore, the FJC stepped back.
That is the encouraging part. Institutions rarely retreat unless pushed, and rarer still is a retreat that restores proper boundaries rather than inventing new justifications. For a brief moment, process triumphed over presumption.
This does not mean the issue is settled. The incentives that produced the chapter remain. Climate litigation remains attractive precisely because it bypasses legislatures and voters. Efforts to “educate” judges toward preferred narratives will continue, likely in subtler forms. Chapters can be rewritten. Language can be softened. Pressure can be reapplied.
But for now, the judiciary’s support arm remembered what it is not supposed to be: a vehicle for resolving contested policy questions by administrative suggestion.
That is not a victory for any particular scientific theory. It is a victory for skepticism in its proper sense—for restraint, for adversarial testing, and for the idea that courts should decide cases based on evidence presented in court, not conclusions embedded in advance.
Sometimes progress looks dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a chapter quietly disappearing from a manual.
As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently- updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.
As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently- updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.
In my post, I characterized the authors’ write-up of the methodology of these attribution studies as relying on “logical fallacy,” and as “double-talk and bafflegab.” But I think that I inadequately articulated the nature of the fallacy. So, I will try to correct that here.
The heart of the problem is that science is all about hypotheses being subject to empirical test against real world evidence. But the “attribution” studies and their methodology seek to evade that necessary step. Instead, these studies claim to validate their attributions by reference to things like “physical understanding” and models that have not been empirically validated. In other words, rather than using empirical evidence to validate a hypothesis, they use one hypothesis supposedly to validate another hypothesis. They have assumed the conclusion they want to reach. This process is sometimes called circular reasoning.
To be fair, when buried in the midst of enough confusing verbiage, circular reasoning can often be difficult to detect. That is not an excuse for the fancily- credentialed pooh-bahs who have signed off on this Manual. If you aren’t up to the job of detecting circular reasoning, you are not qualified to contribute to a Manual like this one.
Here is the central portion of the key language in the new Manual chapter, as quoted from my previous post, with important words highlighted:
[A]ttribution involves sifting through a range of possible causative factors to determine the role of one or more drivers with respect to the detected change. This is typically accomplished by using physical understanding, as well as climate models and/or statistical analysis, to compare how the variable responds when certain drivers are changed or eliminated entirely.
So, to make an “attribution,” we compare the event that just happened against our “physical understanding” and against our “climate models.” Both of those things are our assumptions or hypotheses, not our proof. (The category of “statistical analysis” cannot be evaluated without more information. “Statistical analysis” of what? If it’s statistical analysis of our current hypothesis against our previous assumptions, then it’s another example of circular reasoning.) Thus, we have compared our new hypothesis to our pre-existing hypotheses, and they match! Therefore, we claim that the new hypothesis must be correct!
The missing piece is some kind of empirical study that establishes a definitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the type of event that you are seeking to blame on CO2 emissions. Remarkably, that does not exist for any form of extreme weather event, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, or anything else. A good compilation of studies failing to show any relationship between global temperatures and extreme weather events can be found in Steven Koonin’s book Unsettled. Anyway, you know that there is no such demonstrated empirical connection, because if there were the “attribution” advocates would cite those studies instead of trying to prove attribution with their own a priori assumptions.
![[COPY] Climate Science Is Creeping Into Courtrooms](https://i0.wp.com/climatescience.press/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Climate-Charlatans.jpg?fit=450%2C450&ssl=1)
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